


not made for oblivion

by ncfan



Category: Samurai Jack (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied Jashi, Not the focus - Freeform, Spoilers, the power of hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 04:24:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10959600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Ashi would not have made it even this far without hope.





	not made for oblivion

**Author's Note:**

> So, I said on Tumblr that I was forming an AU head canon, and some people took it more literally than I expected. Then it occurred to me that there was no reason why they _shouldn't_ , so this fic was created as an apology.

Any attempt to perceive time had proved fruitless so far; the ability to perceive time had not come back to her yet. It could have been years, or months, or mere days, since she had faded away in the sunlight, since the air had drowned her and she had vanished like mist burned away by the sun.

Ashi had thought that that would be the end. At the time, when she was staring into a face full of anguish and she was struggling to take one more breath, all that was in her mind was _No, no, not like this, not after I fought so long, not after I fought so hard to be happy._ Of course this was how it would be. She was born of Aku’s essence, and Aku was dead in a time long before she was ever born. Her mother, if that woman had ever been born at all, had never drank a demon’s essence, had never been impregnated with darkness and given birth to seven daughters who were at once shadow and mortal flesh. Her existence had been undone, and it had simply taken this long for the echoes to reach her.

That would be the end, then. She would not die. She would simply cease to be.

Or so she thought.

After years, after months, or merely after days, consciousness began to return to her, slowly. In the beginning, she was deep in a forest, nowhere she recognized, and she remembered nothing, not her past, not the pain that had been the definition of her life for so long, not even her name.

She was a phantasm in an unfamiliar wood, something that rippled and sparkled like a gossamer butterfly’s wing, see-through and fragile. Her anger came back to her first, rolling waves of pain and fury that threatened to snuff her out yet again, but she had always been strong—always _had_ to be strong—and she clung to this half-existence, unable to touch or feel anything physical at all, simply because she shuddered away from oblivion. Simply because even then, there was a spark of hope in her that burned like an inferno, something that simply wouldn’t allow her to give up. Ashi was not made for oblivion. She knew that in her bones.

Her memory came back to her in bits and pieces, like someone fitting the broken shards of a vase back together. The vase could never go back to its unbroken state, but it could be something resembling whole, and someone once broken, put back together, could live in the world again. Anger and pain were tempered by curiosity, by regret, by truth and by love. She was not herself without all of these things, not even without her anger. Ashi would not have rejected her anger. She did not know herself without it, no more than she knew herself without pain, without curiosity, without regret, truth, and love.

(She was not Aku, in the end. Aku loved no one but himself—Ashi was not sure that he was even capable of loving something that wasn’t himself. This gave her some hope, even when she wondered if she would ever be something more solid than a phantasm in a forest where no human ever seemed to walk.)

As Ashi became more herself again, she thought that she was also becoming more solid. Her unfeeling half-life was becoming something less numb, and when she held her arm up to the sun, it had become marginally more difficult to see the light passing through it. She did not know what it was, what had caused her survival, nor her slow reconstitution. Perhaps there was a spark of magic in her that had nothing to do with Aku, something that had not come from him and could not be corrupted, or destroyed. Perhaps her mother’s blood was good for something after all; perhaps it had served as a tether, something that anchored her to the mortal plane. Perhaps some outside power had decided that all her pain, all her struggles had been worth something, that she deserved to be able to live in the world denied her for so long after all.

Tender green leaves were growing on the branches of trees, interspersed with delicate pink and white blossoms that shivered under even the gentlest breeze. Slender shoots of grass poked up from the soil, and animals that had wintered underground were beginning to venture forth from their dens. No longer was the stream Ashi lingered by choked with ice.

She wondered when the day would come when she would be able to smell the flowers’ scent. Wondered when the day would come when she could thrust her hand into the water and feel the dampness on her skin, feel if it was cold or warm. Wondered when the day would come that the animals of the forest would finally see her, rather than look through her.

Ashi did not know when that day would be, but she could hope. She could certainly do that. There was more to her life than simply this, she was certain of it. Ashi was not made for oblivion, and she would not have made it even this far without hope.


End file.
